Write Christian

After her concert disaster, Tokiko isolates herself in hot spring mist. She doesn’t contemplate su*cide per se, but Buddhist dissipation into the universe. Ri meets her at her lowest point, revealing that the Zen concert drug he managed led to the disaster, not Tokiko’s mistakes.

Speaking from AU rewrites, this anime should’ve been based on verifiable real-world psychology. Instead it mixes Western Jungian psychology with Eastern culture and bizarre anime superpowers. That perfect blend of Eastern and Western influence is what’s so fascinating though.

The busy pedo daddy found crunch time to bond strongly and intensely with his daughter, which led to isolating her psychologically from everyone including her mother. This would damage her view of love and warp her to objectify herself and become self-harming to please audiences.

Komoda acts warm with Tokiko even though she’s valued as a business asset moreso than a human. She treats herself the same way by perfecting her craft day and night, wearing herself down to the bone because she fears any less effort would mean a loss for Ajo.

I gave her jowls to see how far I could push her looks past the beauty stage. 🫢

When Tokiko learns a horrible truth about the drug used at her concerts she has difficulty keeping a Zen state. Eventually it leads to her failure onstage and she escapes with a little girl who knows the girls used in the drugs but becomes Tokiko’s new audience for Tokiko’s sake.

Hints that Ken unconsciously transferred the comfort experience he received from “The Craftsman” to Tokiko who rejects it. A man’s thinking is so straightforward that a woman with a mystical background finds it primitive. Will she start calling him a harasser for trying to help?

These two traveling abroad as “psymed” students. One of them is excited and open to the experience, the other not so much. But it’s a necessary step to learning firsthand about drug use at concerts and the altered, supernatural states of consciousness that take place. Woodstock.

Ri and Sakura’s connection is that they both have been disillusioned by their jobs and subsequently the culture they live in. 🍃 Sakura is frustrated with the sexism and inability to achieve her material dreams. Ri is frustrated with a dead-end career path that turned villainous.

Zen Daruma dolls are traditionally sold with blank white eyes. When setting a goal or making a wish you paint in the left eye. When the goal is achieved you fill in the right eye. So it’s like the Antichrist or humans with a blind right eye? Signaling incompleteness/imperfection.

In the wake of sexual abuse, these two logically navigate the meaning of true masculine/feminine strength despite being treated as less than human. Maybe their burdens are too much for them to carry alone?